I have no intention of trawling through all your postings but will say that you quite clearing suggested that the exoneration of the Liverpool fans was misplaced despite the jury's verdict.

Interestingly the woman chosen to take over as chief of the SYP has now offered to step down as it was revealed that she herself is under investigation by the North West or Greater Mmanchester police force. You really couldn't make it up. But of course the bad ones are always in the minority.

That's simply wrong, as were your accusations in the Tomlinson, and Plebgate cases, but they are written now, and some will believe that. Thank you.

The scrutiny of South Yorks is immense now, and I dont know what ACC has supposed to have done, but it's nice to see you've found her guilty already.

Perhaps a little balance would help, rather than over the top rantings about how the police in general are corrupt criminals. They're not. At my level, I saw examples of excellent work constantly.

If you want to slag me off for stating that, then carry on.

This thread is supposed to be about Hillsborough, but you've dragged it in this tedious direction. Start yet another police slagging thread for general use if you like.

Yes and no

I don't know what ACC is supposed to have done either. Please tell me how you conclude that I have found her guilty already.


Surely the whole point is that the police should not be the same as any other group. The selection process should be designed so as to exclude as many "wrong uns" as possible and ongoing management procedures should weed out the rest. Instead of that we have a culture where the first priority of police officers is to protect each other's reputations.

You said,


That sounds a typically sarcastic post from you, implying guilt. If you meant something else, explain, and I will acknowledge that, even though you wont withdraw the lies you've spoken about me today.

Do you know of a selection process that can foresee what someone is likely to do over the next 30 odd years? When you consider how many Police Officers there are, the vast majority are not "wrong uns".

More police officers are prosecuted, and sacked now than ever before, because systems have changed to allow that.

If you actually had any idea of what you were talking about on this topic, you'd know that, but you're not interested, because you are a regular slagger off of everything they do.

Not only that, she eventually got booted out of her job. I'm sure Debra Martin wasn't the only one either, but i just thought back then she was a young woman with no protection through seniority. She was dispensable. Like the friends and relatives of the 96, Martin has also spent the past 27 years not being believed.


And i can believe it too, but what i find so hard to comprehend is why some football fans mourned the loss of terraces? I just cannot 'get' why someone would prefer to stand in a crowd on cold concrete for 90 minutes leaning (if lucky enough to find one) against a metal bar?

I've read things like "atmosphere" "camaraderie" etc, but then i look at other similar spectator sports, Rugby, Tennis, Ice Hockey, even American football, and all their stadiums had seating back then. Their spectators were treated like human beings but UK football always seemed stuck in an Andy Capp time warp to me.

Not to go over old ground when the basic facts were established in 1989. Far too many legal eagles were there.


The Police made mistakes, many mistakes, criminal mistakes, but you have not answered my question. Why were they forced to open the gate?

It was because the police failed to prevent crowd congestion on the approaches to the stadium. They allowed too many fans into the holding area in front of the seven turnstiles (seven turnstiles for 10,100 supporters). Police cordons were in place for the previous semi finals but not this time. The police knew that the layout of the turnstiles caused problems in previous years so they should have regulated the entry of supporters more efficiently.

I lived in Sheffield throughout the 1980s and 1990s and many eyewitness accounts from Sheffield people on the day of the behaviour of the Liverpool fans is very different to the account the Hillsborough families would have you believe.
If you have a spare couple of hours, you might wish to have a look at some of the posts on these threads, which shows that many people have doubts about the inquiry’s verdict that the Liverpool fans all behaved impeccably and not one of them contributed in any way to the crush.

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/show...1462072&page=9

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/show...050732&page=60

I would also add that if you’ve spent any time in a court hearing or inquiry you’ll know that a jury verdict doesn’t necessarily prove that one side was telling the truth and the other way lying; quite often it comes down to which side’s lawyers are the most convincing.

My own feeling is that the jury’s conclusion the Liverpool fans were blameless was based on emotion rather than logic. To have to sit through 2 years of witnesses getting upset over such an emotive issue is bound to have an emotional effect, but verdicts should always be based on logic, not emotion. And the idea that the fans of a club that, 4 years previously caused the Heysel disaster and as late as 2007 were described by football’s governing body as the worst in Europe, were blameless simply isn’t logical.

Allowing too many fans to be there was a big failing but why did they have to open the gate ?

We still have terraces at non league level and, so long as it's not overcrowded and fans behave themselves, it's a much better experience than being sat down. If terraces were really as unsafe as many claim, they would have been banned at all levels of sport many years ago.

They didn't have to open the gate, they chose to. They could have delayed the start, announced it properly so that those anxious to get into the ground weren't panicking about missing the start, and held the spectators back in the streets further away from the ground so that they got in a controlled way and in manageable numbers.

Or they could have opened the gate but deployed officers and stewards at the tunnel entrance to ensure that the crowd filled all 4 pens, not just the 2 nearest the exit from the tunnel.

Either of those actions would have either prevented the disaster or significantly reduced the scale of it, but they just opened the gates and did nothing to manage the consequences of that decision.

I would rather take the evidence and conclusions of the inquiry rather than random posts from a forum.

Because it was dangerously overcrowded in an enclosed space - people were being crushed. What eventually happened inside was happening outside.

Once the fans were through the gates they should have been re directed to the pens on the right and left - i you look at the video clip of evidence you'll see that the obvious place to head for (if you had no prior knowledge of the ground) was the tunnel directly ahead. The other pens were not really signposted in any clear way at all.

+
SYP+SWFC were duty bound to have a contingency plan. they had none.
According to an expert independent witness, the basic information was there as early as 2.15pm. he would have been thinking of delaying the kick off and opening the gate at 2.30pm
He would have introduced a ticket tearing system to allow fans to enter through the gates quickly.
All this was to solve the problem of what you say. he should have had a filtering system approaching the ground.
It goes far deeper than this but the main point is it's basic policing.
Even the crush itself was handled extremely badly. his comments are embarrassing to senior officers reactions.
Was Duckenfield at fault for opening the gate . well the point is he should never had let the situation get so out of hand but at 2.52pm things were so bad he had no choice.
So what should he have done when ordering the gate to be opened, at least tell the police on the other side of the gate to be ready to have a reception committee to divert them to the outer pens when the gates opened. never happened.

I've been at games where the crowd outside the stadium have been held back..
The way the police were treated was appauling......even being ignored and the crowd carry on through.

Normal procedure was for the police to have a cordon a quarter mile from the ground to check tickets and control the flow of fans into the turnstile areas. There was no cordon and btw the police were not forced to open the gate, they chose to do that.

Here's your answer.

As i've mentioned before i'm not a football fan and have never been to a match in my entire life, so could you explain the bib to me as that's what i struggle to comprehend? I can understand people attending a lads 'n dads or five a side club not having a seated stadium as those grounds are often just school playing fields, but surely even the poorest of obscure tiny clubs can afford some plastic seats for their stadiums?

The jury says their behavior did not contribute.

It's entirely logical.

You asserting that their conclusion is based on emotion is disgraceful and a terrible slur on those individuals.

You have nothing to support your opinion other than "feelings" (your term).

Jolly interesting but nothing to do with the unlawful killings at Hillsborough. Just about every moment was captured on film and camera and there is zero evidence of bad behaviour from the fan.

You have probably answered your own question. I would say that football is a working class sport despite the millions it now generates, and standing on the terraces evokes that working class / grass roots feeling of a small, local match.

As I understand it, she was being investigated following complaints by another policeman, who himself had been dismissed. I don't know who is in the right and who is in the wrong. You are trying to make capital out of someone being investigated. Surely the fact that she is being investigated following a complaint by what could be a disgruntled ex-employee is a sign that individual officers are not above investigation.

Surely this is an good thing? There be plenty of complaints if it were thought that these sort of things were not investigated.

4
If she was under investigation why was she put in charge of SY police this week?

Apart from the fact the poster provided links and gave an explanation as to why they think what they do. Therefore has provided something to support their thoughts, explained why a jury isn't always reliable.

Perfectly reasonable post.